Information compression and speckle reduction for multifrequency polarimetric SAR images based on kernel PCA

Multifrequency polarimetric SAR imagery provides a very convenient approach for signal processing and acquisition of radar image. However, the amount of information is scattered in several images, and redundancies exist between different bands and polarizations. Similar to signal-polarimetric SAR image, multifrequency polarimetric SAR image is corrupted with speckle noise at the same time. A method of information compression and speckle reduction for multifrequency polarimetric SAR imagery is presented based on kernel principal component analysis （KPCA）. KPCA is a nonlinear generalization of the linear principal component analysis using the kernel trick. The NASA/JPL polarimetric SAR imagery of P, L, and C bands quadpolarizations is used for illustration. The experimental results show that KPCA has better capability in information compression and speckle reduction as compared with linear PCA.

Targets detecting in the ocean using the cross-polarized channels of fully polarimetric SAR data

Azimuth ambiguities （ghost targets） discrimination is of great interest with the development of a synthet- ic aperture radar （SAR）. And the azimuth ambiguities are often mistaken as actual targets and cause false alarms. For actual targets, HV channel signals acquired by a fully polarimetric SAR are approximately equal to a VH channel in magnitude and phase, i.e., the reciprocity theorem applies, but shifted in phase about ±π for the first-order azimuth ambiguities. Exploiting this physical behavior, the real part of the product of the two cross-polarized channels, i.e. （SHVSVH）, hereafter called A12r, is employed as a new parameter for a target detection at sea. Compared with other parameters, the contrast of A12r image between a target and the surrounding sea surface will be obviously increased when A12r image is processed by mean filtering algo- rithm. Here, in order to detect target with constant false-alarm rates （CFARs）, an analytical expression for the probability density function （pdf） ofA12r is derived based on the complexWishart-distribution. Because a value of A12r is greater/less than 0 for real target/its azimuth ambiguities, the first-order azimuth ambiguities can be completely removed by this A12r-based CFAR technology. Experiments accomplished over C-band RADARSAT-2 fully polarimetric imageries confirm the validity.

STUDY ON SPECKLE REDUCTION IN MULTI-LOOK POLARIMETRIC SAR IMAGE

This paper studies the speckle reduction in multi-look polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image. A multi-look polarimetric whitening filtering (MPWF) method is presented and extended to form a fully polarimetric filter with multi-channel output. The paper also quantifies the speckle reduction amount achievable by the MPWF, and compares the MPWF with the span, weighting and power equalization methods. Experimental results with the NASA/JPL L-band 4-look polarimetric SAR data verify the effectiveness and superiority of the MPWF, and show that the MPWF is of great advantage for enhancing SAR image classification.

CLASSIFICATION OF MULTI-LOOK POLARIMETRIC SAR IMAGERY AND POLARIZATION CHANNEL OPTIMIZATION

In this paper, a new maximum likelihood (ML) classification algorithm is proposed to classify the multi-look polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery. Experimental results with the NASA/JPL airborne L-band polarimetric SAR data demonstrate the effectiveness of the new algorithm. Furthermore, when using the algorithm in the classifications with subsets of the multi-look polarimetric SAR data, the polarization-channel optimization for the terrain type classification is implemented.

Analysis of impacting factors on polarimetric SAR oil spill detection

Polarimetric synthetic aperture radar （SAR） oil spill detection parameters conformity coefficient （μ）, Muller matrix parameters （｜C｜,B0 ）, the eigenvalues of simplified coherency matrix （λnos） and the influence of SAR observing parameters, ocean environment and noise level are investigated. Radarsat-2 data are used to make systematic analysis of polarimetric parameters for different incidences, wind speeds, noise levels and the ocean phenomena （oil slick and look likes）. The influence of the SAR observing parameters, the ocean environment and the noise level on the typical polarimetric SAR parameter conformity coefficient has been analyzed. The results indicate that conformity coefficient cannot be simply used for oil spill detection, which represents the image signal to the noise level to some extent. When the signals are below the noise level for the oil slick and the look likes, the conformity coefficients are negative; while the signals above the noise level corresponds to positive conformity coefficients. For dark patches （low wind and biogenic slick） with the signal below the noise, polarization features such as conformity coefficient cannot separate them with oil slick. For the signal above the noise, the oil slick, the look likes （low wind and biogenic slick） and clean sea all have positive conformity coefficients, among which, the oil slick has the smallest conformity coefficient, the look likes the second, and the clean sea the largest value. For polarimetric SAR data oil spill detection, the noise plays a significant role. So the polafimetric SAR data oil spill detection should be carried out on the basis of noise consideration.

AN UNSUPERVISED CLASSIFICATION FOR FULLY POLARIMETRIC SAR DATA USING SPAN/H/α IHSL TRANSFORM AND THE FCM ALGORITHM

In this paper, the IHSL transform and the Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) segmentation algorithm are combined together to perform the unsupervised classification for fully polarimetric Synthetic Ap-erture Rader (SAR) data. We apply the IHSL colour transform to H/α/SPANspace to obtain a new space (RGB colour space) which has a uniform distinguishability among inner parameters and contains the whole polarimetric information in H/α/SPAN.Then the FCM algorithm is applied to this RGB space to finish the classification procedure. The main advantages of this method are that the parameters in the color space have similar interclass distinguishability, thus it can achieve a high performance in the pixel based segmentation algorithm, and since we can treat the parameters in the same way, the segmentation procedure can be simplified. The experiments show that it can provide an improved classification result compared with the method which uses the H/α/SPANspace di-rectly during the segmentation procedure.

Integration of SAR Polarimetric Features and Multi-spectral Data for Object-Based Land Cover Classification

An object-based approach is proposed for land cover classification using optimal polarimetric parameters.The ability to identify targets is effectively enhanced by the integration of SAR and optical images.The innovation of the presented method can be summarized in the following two main points:①estimating polarimetric parameters(H-A-Alpha decomposition)through the optical image as a driver;②a multi-resolution segmentation based on the optical image only is deployed to refine classification results.The proposed method is verified by using Sentinel-1/2 datasets over the Bakersfield area,California.The results are compared against those from pixel-based SVM classification using the ground truth from the National Land Cover Database(NLCD).A detailed accuracy assessment complied with seven classes shows that the proposed method outperforms the conventional approach by around 10%,with an overall accuracy of 92.6%over regions with rich texture.

Structural adaptive and optimal speckle filtering in multilook full polarimetric SAR images

A novel approach is proposed for speckle reduction in multilook full polarimetric SAR images. In contrast to others, this approach adopts an enhanced structure detection method to estimate the parameters of the polarimetric covariance matrix for the multilook polarimetric whitening filtering （MPWF） algorithm and thus a structural adaptive and optimal speckle filter is developed. To evaluate the present approach, NASA SIR-C/X- SAR, L band, four-look processed polarimetric SAR data of the Tian-Mountain Forest is used for simulation. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of this novel filtering algorithm in case of both speckle reduction and preservation of texture information. Comparisons with other methods are also made.

STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF MULTI-LOOK POLARIMETRIC SAR IMAGERY

With a multiplicative speckle model, this paper shows the multi-look polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data obeys a generalized K-distribution. To validate this distribution model, the multi-look intensity K-distribution is particularly tested. The relationship between the heterogeneity coefficient of the scene and the proper statistical model is experimentally established. In addition, based on the results of the statistical analysis, an adaptive classification scheme is presented, and the improved classification shows the importance of the statistical analysis.

Supervised polarimetric SAR classification method based on Fisher linear discriminant

A supervised polarimetric SAR land cover classification method was proposed based on the Fisher linear discriminant. The feature parameters used in this classification method could be se- lected flexibly according to land covers to be classified. Polarimetric and texture feature parameters extracted from co-registered multifrequency and multi-temporal polarimetric SAR data could be com- bined together for classification use, without consideration of the dimension difference of each fea- ture parameter and the joint probability density function of those parameters. Experimental result with AGRSAR L/C-band full polarimetric SAR data showed that a total classification accuracy of 94. 33% was achieved by combining the polarimetric with texture feature parameters extracted from L/C dual band SAR data, demonstrating the effectiveness of this method.

A method for coastal oil tank detection in polarimetric SAR images based on recognition of T-shaped harbor

To automatically detect oil tanks in polarimetric synthetic aperture radar（SAR） images, a coastal oil tank detection method is proposed based on recognition of T-shaped harbor. First of all, the T-shaped harbor is detected to locate the region of interest（ROI） of oil tanks. Then all suspicious targets in the ROI are extracted by the segmentation of strong scattering targets and the classifier of H/α. The template targets are selected from the suspicious targets by the combination of a proposed circular degree parameter and the similarity parameter（SP） of the polarimetric coherency matrix. Finally, oil tanks are detected according to the statistics of the similarity parameter between each suspicious target and template targets in ROI. Polarimetric SAR data acquired by RADARSAT-2 over Berkeley and Singapore areas are used for testing. Experiment results show that most of the targets are correctly detected and the overall detection rate is close to 80%.The false rate is effectively reduced by the proposed algorithm compared with the method without T-shaped harbor recognition.

ADAPTIVE MODEL-BASED SCATTERING DECOMPOSITION OF POLARIMETRIC SAR INTERFEROMETRY

In this paper,a new decomposition method is proposed to solve the problems that vegetation component is overestimated and is not sensitive to directional scattering features with traditional polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar(SAR)decomposition.It uses a Polarimetric Interferometric Similarity Parameter(PISP)calculated from Polarimetric SAR Interferometry(PolInSAR)datasets to the scattering decomposition.The PISP is proposed to reveal the geometric sensitivity of SAR interferometry.It is defined by three optimized mechanisms obtained from PolInSAR datasets,therefore,it not only relates to the coherent scattering mechanism closely,but also sufficiently uses the phase and amplitude information.The PISP of building is high,and forest’s PISP is low.The proposed method uses the PISP as a judge condition to select different vegetation model adaptively.The decomposition results show the proposed method can effectively solve the vegetation ingredients overestimation problem.In addition,it is sensitive to the directional scattering.

Analysis of a Residual Model for the Decomposition of Polarimetric SAR Data

Accurate estimation of the double-bounce scattering fd and surface scattering fs coefficients with Freeman-Durden decomposition is still difficult. This difficulty arises because overestimation of the volume scattering energy contribution Pv leads to negative values for fd and fs. A generalized residual model is introduced to estimate fd and fs. The relationship between Pv and the residual model is analyzed. Eigenvalues computed from the residual model must be positive to explain physical scattering mechanisms. The authors employ a new volumetric scattering model to minimize Pv as calculated by several decomposition methods. It is concluded that decreasing Pv can help reduce negative energy. This conclusion is validated using actual polarimetric SAR data.

Shallow sea topography detection using fully Polarimetric Gaofen-3 SAR data based on swell patterns

Compared to single-polarization synthetic aperture radar(SAR)data,fully polarimetric SAR data can provide more detailed information of the sea surface,which is important for applications such as shallow sea topography detection.The Gaofen-3 satellite provides abundant polarimetric SAR data for ocean research.In this paper,a shallow sea topography detection method was proposed based on fully polarimetric Gaofen-3 SAR data.This method considers swell patterns and only requires SAR data and little prior knowledge of the water depth to detect shallow sea topography.Wave tracking was performed based on preprocessed fully polarimetric SAR data,and the water depth was then calculated considering the wave parameters and the linear dispersion relationships.In this paper,four study areas were selected for experiments,and the experimental results indicated that the polarimetric scattering parameterαhad higher detection accuracy than quad-polarization images.The mean relative errors were 14.52%,10.30%,12.56%,and 12.90%,respectively,in the four study areas.In addition,this paper also analyzed the detection ability of this model for different topographies,and the experiments revealed that the topography could be well recognized when the topography gradient is small,the topography gradient direction is close to the wave propagation direction,and the isobath line is regular.

基于GF-3全极化SAR指数特征的水体信息提取

单极化雷达影像在水体信息提取时,对与水体散射特征相似的地物区别能力不高。针对此问题,本文基于全极化高分三号卫星影像数据,分析不同极化方式散射特征,构建不同极化方式的水体指数特征,将得到的指数特征组合构建特征影像数据,利用特征影像结合面向对象的方法实现水体信息的快速、高精度提取,并选取全极化高分三号作为数据进行试验。结果表明,利用不同极化数据构建的水体指数特征影像数据,进行水体提取的效果较好、精度较高。

基于SVM的POL-SAR图像分类研究

提出了一种将物理散射机理、纹理信息和SVM结合起来用于POL-SAR图像分类的方法。实验数据选取德国Oberpfaffenhofen实验区域(DE)的DLR ESARL波段全极化数据,实验区域包括自然植被,如森林、田地和人造目标如建筑、机场跑道等。首先利用OEC分解得到了散射特征,然后提取HH和HV通道图像的纹理特征,并用SVM进行特征选择及分类。然后在上述特征中加入Freeman分解的散射特征重复试验,取得了较好的结果。试验证明了将散射特征和纹理特征结合起来对地物进行分类是有效的,同时也证明了用SVM进行特征选择的有效性。

Detection of weak ship signals with the optimization of polarimetric contrast enhancement

An optimization of polarimetric contrast enhancement method is proposed to detect ships with lowship-to-clutter power ratio.The received power is calculated with Kennaugh matrix and an iterative algo-rithm is adopted to get the optimal polarimetric states.The optimization method depresses the power of o-cean clutter and increases the power of ship signal.With the double effects,the contrast of ship to oceanis dramatically increased.Thus small ship or weak signals of low ship-to-ocean power ratio can easily bedetected.Ship signals can be distinguished from speckle noise using the different variation trend after op-timization,and thus the threshold problem can be avoided.Moreover,the analyses of different ship'sKennaugh matrices give two implications.One is that the results are affected little by choosing differentKennaugh matrices of ships with strong intensity from Synthetic Aperture Radar(SAR)images.The otheris that ship's Kennaugh matrix chosen from real SAR images is more favorable than that of ideal scatter-ing.Finally,the optimization results are confirmed by polarimetric scattering angle and co-polarizationphase difference.

Fully Polarimetric Land Cover Classification Based on Markov Chains

A novel land cover classification procedure is presented utilizing the information content of fully polarimetric SAR images. The Cameron coherent target decomposition (CTD) is employed to characterize land cover pixel by pixel. Cameron’s CTD is employed since it provides a complete set of elementary scattering mechanisms to describe the physical properties of the scatterer. The novelty of the proposed land classification approach lies on the fact that the features used for classification are not the types of the elementary scatterers themselves, but the way these types of scatterers alternate from pixel to pixel on the SAR image. Thus, transition matrices that represent local Markov models are used as classification features for land cover classification. The classification rule employs only the most important transitions for decision making. The Frobenius inner product is employed as similarity measure. Ten different types of land cover are used for testing the proposed method. In this aspect, the classification performance is significantly high.

基于融合距离的极化SAR图像非局部均值滤波

在极化合成孔径雷达(synthetic aperture radar,SAR)图像降噪领域,常见的非局部均值滤波仅依靠像素间的统计距离进行相似性度量,忽略了像素点的空间信息。本文结合极化SAR数据统计特性和图像空间特征作为像素间的相似性度量,提出了一种利用融合距离来计算相邻窗口权重的方法——基于融合距离的非局部均值滤波器。融合距离的引入使得滤波器能够更全面的评估像素间的相似性,从而得到更合适的像素权重。此外,本方法还引进变异系数对邻域窗口的权重进行评估,通过该参数可以控制滤波的程度。在多幅极化SAR图像上的实验结果表明,所提出的滤波器能够在有效抑制斑点噪声的同时保留较为完整的图像边缘信息和极化散射特性。

Fully Polarimetric Land Cover Classification Based on Hidden Markov Models Trained with Multiple Observations

A land cover classification procedure is presented utilizing the information content of fully polarimetric SAR images. The Cameron coherent target decomposition (CTD) is employed to characterize each pixel, using a set of canonical scattering mechanisms in order to describe the physical properties of the scatterer. The novelty of the proposed classification approach lies on the use of Hidden Markov Models (HMM) to uniquely characterize each type of land cover. The motivation to this approach is the investigation of the alternation between scattering mechanisms from SAR pixel to pixel. Depending on the observations-scattering mechanisms and exploiting the transitions between the scattering mechanisms we decide upon the HMM-land cover type. The classification process is based on the likelihood of observation sequences been evaluated by each model. The performance of the classification approach is assessed my means of fully polarimetric SLC SAR data from the broader area of Vancouver, Canada and was found satisfactory, reaching a success from 87% to over 99%.